TV GUIDE: Weekend TV Roundup: Sherlock, Rock ’n' Roll, Comedy Awards and More
May 4, 2012
by Matt Roush
"Brainy's the new sexy."
Didn't we always know that? But how nice to have it reconfirmed — by none other than Irene Adler (Lara Pulver), the only woman ever known to render the great and arrogant Sherlock Holmes speechless. She appears as never before, as a saucy and sometimes naked dominatrix possessing scandalous government secrets, in the first of three scintillating new Sherlock brain-teasers, starting Sunday on PBS' Masterpiece Mystery! (check local listings).
As brilliantly updated into a modern-day franchise by Steven Moffat (Doctor Who) and Mark Gatiss, who appears on occasion as Sherlock's exasperated and well-connected brother Mycroft, the second season kicks off by resolving last year's cliffhanger that pitted the dashing Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch, a tall drink of flashing wit and ferocious bark) against his greatest nemesis, the playfully malevolent arch-fiend Moriarty (Andrew Scott, smarmy and smug). They will clash again even more memorably in this season's dizzying and dazzling finale, "The Reichenbach Fall," inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Final Problem."
But first we're treated to the delicious "A Scandal in Belgravia" (not to be confused with the "Bohemia" of the original story), which opens with Sherlock fuming over his newfound notoriety, playing backseat blogger to his long-suffering sidekick Dr. John Watson (the affably prickly Martin Freeman). "The last thing I need is a public image," frets the private detective. So how and why does Sherlock turn up buck naked in Buckingham Palace? If that's made you curious enough to tune in, my work is done.
As in the first season, it is always exhilarating to watch the peerless sleuth at work, his thought processes visualized as on a computer screen. But when he first encounters the exotic and saucy enigma that is Irene, all he sees are "?????" She has his number, and he has hers — and we're not just talking cell phones, although that is part of this gloriously twisty tale. "He will outlive God trying to have the last word," declares Watson. But in Irene Adler, he may just have met his match...
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